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theodp writes "President Obama and his daughters headed to an indie bookstore last Saturday to promote shopping local. The White House did not disclose which books were bought, but author Lauren Oliver tweeted her delight after a White House photo showed her books Delirium and Pandemonium were among the 15 children's books purchased by the Obama family for Christmas gift-giving. While it made for a nice Small Business Saturday photo op, do you suppose the President paid much more for the books at the small indie bookshop than he might have at an online retailer like Amazon, where the hardcopy edition of Pandemonium is $10.15 (44% off the $17.99 list price) and the hardcopy edition of Delirium can be had for $10.47 (42% off the $17.99 list price)? Kindle Editions of the books are also available for $7.99. And with both titles eligible for free Amazon Prime shipping, the President could've saved on gasoline and Secret Service costs, too! So, will you be following the President's lead and shop local this holiday season, or is the siren song of online shopping convenience and savings too hard to resist?"

Are companies in the habit of handing out products and services for free?

If you take that companies products and don't pay for them, or consume that companies service and don't pay for them, then I guarantee you will either go to jail or pay remuneration in another form. Don't kid yourself.

That's an unimpressive argument. Before the government declared they needed to do it, private people and corporations created all the roads that weren't post roads. Post roads is the one thing the constitution actually empowers the federal government to do and they implemented the entire concept without an income tax by charging a postage fee to deliver mail.

Anyways, we have different levels of government and most people who have issues with taxes don't have as much issue with the local taxes that provide services they actually do use or want to have in reserve in case they need to use. So we aren't even sure how much of his gripe is aimed where.

The point is that you cannot live in a modern society without using certain government services (at the federal, state or local levels) paid by taxes.To say that every service can be provided by a commercial enterprise is plainly ridiculous.

There are certainly alternatives to the income tax, e.g., sales tax, property tax, etc. Each one of them has advantages and disadvantages.

I live in a hand built cabin in the middle of a secluded plot of land that has been in my family since before 1776. I have no roads or power, I get my water from an old well, I was homeschooled and my family has had no contact with the outside world for over three hundred years. I have eight fingers on each hand, an iq of seventy, speak an archaic and hopelessly corrupted form of Dutch, and the very concept of a television or computer would cause me to panic and perhaps burn somebody as a witch. I have never heard of the federal government or public services, but I have heard family legends of a distant king.
Sent from my iPad

Amusingly, roads are also one of the most heavily fee-for-service areas of government, so that it actually is a bit closer to his second condition, "if I voluntarily choose to transact, of course I should pay." Fuel taxes, weight fees, toll bridges and roads, license and registration fees, personal property tax - those last two can add up to over a thousand dollars per person per year in some locales for nicer cars.

So you've never needed the police, fire department or EMS? And what private roads do you drive on that get you everywhere you need to go? Didn't go to a public school, or even go to a park? Impressive.

You do understand that you picked state and local services as a counter argument to not wanting to pay federal taxes right? It's a bit like comparing apples in your one hand, to a note someone scribbled about an orange that was phoned in sometime during the night by some unknown person in your other hand. I mean you don't even have a round fruit in that other hand.

...I do try to buy local, but mostly in terms of FOOD. I'm really trying to eat more from local farmers (trying to eat much more produce), and even local ranchers for my beef, pork, lamb and yard bird needs.

But for Xmas things...I just point, click and ship. That makes it SO much easier for me to get my Xmas gifts bought and sent, especially since about 90% of the people I buy for are out of state.

I also appreciate not having to pay the outrageous sales tax locally...almost 10% here.

You don't use roads, you drink from a stream, grow your own food using your own shit for fertilizer (because clearly you don't have a waste processing facility on your property). You generate your own electricity from that stream on your property, too, I guess, since most electrical grids were initially built by the government.

I presume you don't mind Iraqi bombs landing on your house, while Chinese steal the IP that keeps your company going where you collect... you know.. money, whos value is protected and guaranteed by the government (regardless of your view on fiat currency, this is fact). Presumably, you expect to be taken care of if you get sick and your company goes out of business, or you are too old to work? I guess there isn't much to worry about when you get old though, because you'll die of scarlet fever or dysentery or polio or malaria or....

You know what, nevermind....

If you want to see what it's like without government, go visit in Mogadishu or South Sudan.

A socialist can point to successful models of socialism. A libertarian can not point to successful models of no government. Your options are democracies of varying degrees of socialism, totalitarian regimes, or, as you put it, local control.

That's not a straw man argument.

BTW, local control doesn't mean no taxes. The warlords want their money too. Probably less likely to build roads with it though.

TCP/IP is what everyone else uses. If we weren't using it, we'd be using something else. It's like MP3: there were lots of competing standards, and the first one that's "good enough" will often dominate.

the air you breath is clean

Not that there aren't libertarians who are anti-environment (of course there are), but it's not like it's a majority view. I'm pretty okay with regulating pollution; I just wish they would use more efficient methods to achieve the goals.

the water you drink is safe

My municipal water supply has had numerous excursions from standards, although most have been quite minor. And it's only subsidized for the elderly - the rest of us pay the full cost for the system, so we're not really "taking" from government - we're using the umbrella of government to provide a utility directly rather than having it operate as a regulated private entity like power or natural gas. So it's a bit like any other utility - except that I can testify from personal experience that you get a lot better service from the private companies. Last big storm that came through here, we had power company crews from 500 miles around working on our lines. When I bought my house, I had to have the power line re-strung - took a couple of days. It took the city water system over a month to come to my house to install a second meter, and they left my yard a wreck. At least my friends who live in more rural areas can sue the people who run their water cooperative if they pump out substandard water. I can't sue the city.

In that case, the OP is using his boss's money for his shopping. Or is it the money of the people who buy from his boss's business? Or does the money belong to the bosses of the people who buy from the OP's boss's business?

Hmm, this is getting confusing. Can we please just agree that people, even public servants, own the money paid to them, until they pay it to someone else?

Sure people survived. You know, rivers caught fire and all, but people didn't die instantly. Or to pick another example from another part of the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952 [wikipedia.org]. Well, OK, people did drop dead.

So, no, everyone in the world didn't survive. Enough people survived to have a sustainable population (duh) but many people did die and many more had sever health problems.

So basically, your premise is that because business didn't kill absoloutely everyone then their self regulation is sufficient?

If they could, they would be government. The only organization with the power to imprison you for not spending your money on their "services" is government. No other group of people has this power.

You're free to refuse government services and not pay for it; it's called "emigration".FWIW, IMHO, in a true democracy there should be a legal possibility to form a new, independant state in some way. Sadly this is usually where democracy ends.

Americans are basically a good people, most of us. People who are making the best of the situation that they were born into, like anyone in the world. They want a better life for their kids. They who can give generously to local and worldwide charities, and some travel directly to make changes in less developed parts of the world, because they WANT to. And they are a wide range of peoples from every part of the world. They don't always agree with what our government does and work to make a difference, for a better life for everbody, and that's a tall order to fill. They love, laugh and are human beings. It's a shame that this isn't always understood by some people in the world, can't please everybody all the time.

Out of all of the three times (I think... maybe four) that my credit card number has been stolen in the past few years, thus far it has always been stolen at a local merchant. Your credit card number is much safer on Amazon's servers than on a piece of plastic handled by a minimum-wage employee at a local store or restaurant, statistically speaking.

Also, once you have an account with a store, you never have to create a new one. I usually order stuff from the same three or four stores all the time, because they usually have the best prices on the things that I buy. That's really not a huge inconvenience. And you can opt out of email from those companies.

But I'll bite anyway and offer this perspective: people generally know you can find better deals online; that's not a marvel concept. B&M stores simply can't compete with low overhead online warehouses dollar to dollar. But lower prices are not why people shop local. They shop local because of in-person browsing, personalized services, and loyalty to their community, probably in that order.

Amazon is fairly ubiquitous now, ditto Walmart, etc. Imho, one should avoid all these companies for numerous reasons. But how?

Enter the numerous Chinese online retailers. End consumers cannot shop at alibaba.com, but anyone can buy those large minimum orders and resell on ebay. One should therefore always search ebay when shopping.

In many product type, there are large scale specialized online retailers that ship direct from China, like dx.com. Now dx.com's prices aren't necessarily better than amazon's

Enter the numerous Chinese online retailers. End consumers cannot shop at alibaba.com, but anyone can buy those large minimum orders and resell on ebay.

Alibaba is not a shopping site. It's a business to business trade site, that's very different. You don't place orders over Alibaba, you search for suitable suppliers there, then contact them directly, and negotiate a deal with them. After the first contact, Alibaba is usually out of the equation. They make their money with listing fees, not by sales commission like ebay does.

If you are looking for a Chinese alternative to ebay, try taobao [taobao.com]. You will have to be able to read Chinese of course, but that's where the Chinese go for online shopping, and where Chinese individual retailers put their goods up for sale.

First, if you can find significantly better deals online, then the store is overpriced, period. You have a choice when you run a store: sell cheap and make it up in volume, or sell expensive and lose the sale. When I buy DVDs and Blu-Rays at Fry's, they're usually very close to or cheaper than the Amazon price, because the Amazon price builds in a margin to accommodate the free shipping, whereas Fry's doesn't have to absorb that fairly significant cost. And they'll pr

But lower prices are not why people shop local. They shop local because of in-person browsing, personalized services, and loyalty to their community, probably in that order.

People have this odd conception that shopping local somehow is better for the economy, too. It's probably better for the local economy, in the same way that high interest rates on over-valued houses are better for banks: concentrates money in a certain place, in a way that's actually harmful economically but is good for a certain specific entity at the cost of everyone else.

Parable of the broken window again and again and again. In this case, you could buy a book for $19 locally; or you could buy that book for $8 on Amazon Kindle, and spend $11 at your local farmer's market. In the former case, "your community" is richer--where "your community" is a book store. In the latter case, *you* are richer: you have a book *and* you have food, for the same money as just the book; on top of that, the farmer's market has some of your money, instead of the book store having it.

If the book store goes away but the local farmer's market grows, tough beans for the book store. You don't need a local book store--everybody is getting their books cheaper on Amazon and it's the same shit. What you do need is fresh, locally-grown produce that hasn't been picked unripe, gassed, shipped across the entire country, etc. How do I know this? Because nobody's buying books locally and everyone's buying local produce, that's why the farmer's market got bigger and the book store went bankrupt! If you'd all just buy books locally and cut back on the farmer's market spending, a bunch of people would be sitting around reading their expensive books going, "Gee, I wish we could afford good quality fruits and vegetables and fresh meats from a local farmer's market, but we don't have one and I spend all my money on books..."

Looks ridiculous on a small scale, but when you build it out this is exactly what happens. Arbitrarily subsidizing businesses has a cost.

The way the summary was written, the question can be condensed to: "Will you spend more money at a local retailer, or less money and buy online"?

I'm all for supporting local retailers when they provide a valuable service - I visit my local library/store where I can chat to a librarian/store-clerk and get valuable feedback/information. But the article doesn't raise any of these issues. Instead, it focuses on the downsides of brick-and-mortar shopping, without raising any of the positives.

Fuck that. I'll buy from the vendors offering the products I want at prices I agree to. This "buy local" horseshit is nothing but guilt-tripping. Customers aren't property, and if local retailers can't compete, then they shouldn't be in business.

Believe it or not, to some of us, concepts like “community” are more than boxes to check off in Hipster Buzzword Bingo, they mean something identifiable and concrete. I want to live among businesses run by people I know, people who are accountable to the sensibilities of their particular customers, people who interact with the neighborhood they do business in beyond dreary gray spreadsheet transactions. I want to know where my stuff comes from and how it’s produced, and all of that’s worth a few extra bucks to me.

“Buy local” isn’t about guilt-tripping you into buying from a less-efficient-than-Amazon retailer, it’s about fostering values other than “the cheaper the better no matter what the external costs to society.”

Amazon's efficiency means more than just cheaper books. It also means a wider selection of books, and this is what is more important to me.

If all the bookstores in the world were small local bookstores, then all they'd sell is the same small selection of shitty Twilight fan fiction and Dan Brown paperbacks. Ever try to buy a good, up-to-date programming book at a local bookstore?

Twilight and Dan Brown consumers are hardly the bread & butter of the remaining independent bookshops. You’re describing an airport chain bookstore. Real bookstores are curated by knowledgeable staff who — especially if they know you — can make recommendations and provide ad-hoc reviews. I have at least two sci-fi oriented bookstores within half an hour of my house, plus a board/role-playing game store, plus several decent comic stores. I can hang out at any of them and chat with infor

“Accountable” in this context means responsive. Your interaction is a dialogue, not a mouse click. If your locals aren’t selling what you want, you can talk to them and make requests; their business model will adapt to shape itself to its customers’ desires. Go ask a Best Buy clerk to start stocking Linux laptops, see where that gets you.

If my values don’t sync with yours and you don’t care about the things that I care about, no problem, shop at Walmart and save money on

I like community as well. But I loathe big shopping centres (malls to you North Americans) and I would much rather buy commodities from the Internet. It may not seem like it, but most retailing are information providers - you get to check out the product in store. Nowadays you find everything you need to know about a large number of consumer products online, so why not buy there as well?

If (or when) everyone bought commodities online, the local community would still exist. It would just be centred around ba

Fuck that. I'll buy from the vendors offering the products I want at prices I agree to. This "buy local" horseshit is nothing but guilt-tripping. Customers aren't property, and if local retailers can't compete, then they shouldn't be in business.

-jcr

Whereas I prefer to shop from companies who actually contribute back to the local economy by paying their taxes and not stashing them away in tax havens. If companies have sociopathic policies I try to avoid them.

Wouldnt you be better off buying from Amazon and writing a check to the tax man. If you buy from the local store, they get about 5-10% in tax. If you buy from Amazon and send a check, they could get 44% of the price. I am sure the tax man will agree with me.

Whereas I prefer to shop from companies who actually contribute back to the local economy by paying their taxes and not stashing them away in tax havens. If companies have sociopathic policies I try to avoid them.

I can argue that purchasing from Amazon saves me money, money which can then be used to buy extra stuff at local school functions, charities, etc... which helps the community even more than giving more money to one local business-owner. Sociopathic companies is a different matter, but I agree w

Fuck that. I'll buy from the vendors offering the products I want at prices I agree to. This "buy local" horseshit is nothing but guilt-tripping. Customers aren't property, and if local retailers can't compete, then they shouldn't be in business.

You need to take an economics class. Its not purely a guilt trip, there is also actual science and math behind spending locally. Sales and marketing people don't have to lie on those rare occasions when the truth is actually on their side. This is one of those. Spending locally can benefit you, or divert harm from you.

Where you spend your money has a multiplier effect on the community you are spending in. You can benefit your community or you can benefit someone else's. Which of the two do you think is m

Local businesses are at the core of the community. They employ my neighbors and me*. They support local activities and charities. They pay local taxes. I like dealing with them face to face. All of those things and more are worth more to me than saving a few bucks online. I do buy online for things I can't find locally or maybe if the price difference is ridiculous.

* Actually I work for a medium sized multinational corp. but when I started it was a local business that eventually got bought out. We still are active locally.

That's an interesting way to approach life. But let me ask you this: if everyone followed your philosophy, would the world be a better place or worse? Sure, you buying locally will help your local community. But if other people in other communities restrict their shopping to their local shops, wouldn't your local community suffer because it no longer has any markets to export to?

That's an interesting way to approach life. But let me ask you this: if everyone followed your philosophy, would the world be a better place or worse? Sure, you buying locally will help your local community. But if other people in other communities restrict their shopping to their local shops, wouldn't your local community suffer because it no longer has any markets to export to?

No. Because not everything is made or available locally.

Plus there are little complications such as when price is the only factor in a purchasing decision it destroys competition by favoring larger organizations that can leverage economies of scale, externalize costs (manufacture in regions with poor environmental laws, recognize profits in regions with little to no taxes, etc), engage in monopolistic or other unfair practices, etc.

I feel it's my economic duty to provide accurate and useful signals to the market, so my dollars go to the most efficient and cost effective source that meets my requirements for quality, selection, availability and price. If I need something immediately or I need to touch it before buying, I choose a local supplier offering those benefits. If I don't need those things, I select on the remaining criteria. To choose vendors on arbitrary 'feel good' sloganeering deprives me of the best value and deprives the, perhaps distant, vendor that worked hard to meet my mix of needs of the sale they deserve. It also sends false demand signals to local vendors. However these false signals only serve to distort the market temporarily but otherwise are pointless gestures that, in the long run, achieve nothing and help no one.

What's funny is that when others say that about Apple and Microsoft, they get insulted and modded down. "I buy Apple because they have the largest and highest quality app marketplace." "I buy MS because they have hardware support for everything because everyone develops drivers for it." People buy what has value, even if others disagree with that value opinion.

Like someone else said, I specificly frequent local establishments in my neighbourhood, because I know the owners, they live down the street and I see them at the pub on weekends and on my sports teams.

There is value in community. These people, living in the neigbourhood make substantially more money than the assistant manager at "SomeBig MegaStore", and the a huge chunk of that money doesn't end up in some gated community in Arkansas. Then they turn that money back to the community, bringing up home values, allowing other people the chance to open local businesses. In the end, it may not benefit me directly as much as shopping at "SuperCheap MegaStore", but I feel better about it.

As far as I'm concerned, the macroeconomic value of mega-stores promotes a huge class of "factory floor" worker and a tiny fraction of Billionaires, whereas buying local ensures a large group of upper-middle class.

I can tell you that I've known a few Billionaires and a lot of factory workers, and neither of them deserve what they have. Sure the Billionaires work hard and are smart, but often not substantially more than the local shop owner. Sure the factory workers may lack education, intelligence, drive, etc, but are much more gainfully employed at local shops, where they are subject to community standards of behaviour, living, etc.

Other than to the Billionaire class, and people with no concern for their local community, and for the fact that I have no idea how one might equitably do it, I'm a huge proponent of preventing businesses from becoming multinational, and encouraging local investment in small business.

How one does that, other than just one purchase at a time, I have no idea.

Of course, you can choose to be a cog in the machine as well..... Faceless suburbs make me sad.

If you place someone in a major intersection in the suburbs of most major cities in the USA, you simply can't tell where you are, without considering weather and what little vegetation might be visible.... and I find that a bit sad. This is absolutely not the case in most other places in the world.... I think it's a cultural deficit, honestly.

Exactly. Shopping locally is a matter of ethics, much like purchasing organic food. It's not so much that the product is different or better, although oftentimes it is. But you're supporting a business model that creates healthy communities rather than destroying them.

To some people, every good is a commodity and you should try and find the cheapest good possible. But IMHO (and yours, obviously) every dollar spent is a social decision. You're not just buying a widget when you spend $10 at Wal-Mart,

... my requirements for quality, selection, availability and price... To choose vendors on arbitrary 'feel good' sloganeering deprives me of the best value...

You need to take an economics class. Spending locally is not merely feel good sloganeering. Where you purchase and where things are made do matter. Where you spend your money improves a community, if not your then someone else's. The health of your community and your local government's ability to provide you services also provides you a value. With respect to the local government, if they don't get taxes from local businesses they will get it directly from local residents. If things get too extreme or too

While it is cheaper to buy online, it is not always better to do so. I usually buy online only books that I know I already decided to buy.

However I buy more books by visiting physical stores. This is the only place where I can go to and browse through the books, read a few passages, get acquainted with the volume in hand. This process is more important for me than hit-and-run browsing on the internet. Books are tangible goods for me.

I suspect USA president might have visited a bookstore for similar reason (

Shopping local - which doesn't mean shopping at Wal-Mart - isn't something (smart) poor people can really afford to do any more. The mass producers and "service providers" have been funneling so much of the material wealth in their direction - mere pennies each at a time but multiplied by hundreds of them and tens of millions of blood donors^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers - that when a person is poor there really isn't enough left after the aforementioned get their cuts to share with local mom-and-pop businesses, whose overhead is high and economy of scale very low and who need higher profit margins to justify what they're doing.

This is why poor people shop - and all too often also work* - at Wal-Mart. They don't have the option to shop local like Barack and Michelle.

* It's also worth noting that Wal-Mart KNOWS their employees are also customers: not only does Wal-Mart pay low wages and deliberately toy with hours to keep a third or more of its workforce part-time and ineligible for benefits, it also doesn't offer an employee discount. The end result is that Wal-Mart actually gets back as profit a portion of the low wages it pays its employees.

Went to a local hardware store (in business since the Civil War) to purchase bullet catches for a woodworking project since I knew that they carried Stanley brand, unlike the local True Value distributor which I was in on Sunday which carries National Hardware --- turns out that Stanley sold their hardware division to National Hardware, so the bullet catches were the same as the ones I'd rejected on Sunday, just in Stanley's black and yellow packaging.

Lowes and Home Depot don't bother w/ much small hardware, so no bullet catches at either when I checked on Sunday.

The only other choice locally (since the last nearby independent woodworking shop closed) is Woodcraft and their inexpensive bullet catches seem to be from the same Pacific Rim factor which makes them for National Hardware so that leaves Brusso catches (too expensive and I want surface mounted strike plates), so I had to order from Lee Valley in Canada (and order strike plates from D. Lawless).

I really regret my father selling his father's anvil --- looks like I'm going to have to take up metal-working to have nice hardware for my woodworking projects.

I did go out on Black Friday and did find a pair of beat around shoes for 70% off the normal price, but other than wine from a local vineyard, didn't find anything.

The same with almost every shopping trip, nothing to find. Since I'm not one of the herds of hippos roaming the country, stores refuse to carry clothes in my size. As I don't buy products made in China, that excludes just about every electronic device out there.

Even online the selections are meager. As a result, I have free cash flow and no debt because there's nothing to buy. Pretty soon I'll be relegated to wearing a toga and using chalk boards to communicate.

President Obama loves small businesses so much that he's driving them bankrupt with expensive mandatory health insurance regulations.

Funny how this is suddenly all Obama's fault. Last time I checked that law passed both the House and the Senate before he was allowed to sign it into law. And don't give me that shit about a Democrat majority, the GOP could have filibustered it into the dirt and they did not.And fuck off when it comes to the budget, the Constitution flat out says it's up to Congress to figure that out, so I don't understand why you mental midgets keep calling it "Obama's Budget" or "Bush's Budget".

And for the record, if you'd bothered to pay ANY attention you'd know that Romney's version was the same exact fucking thing that Obama supported- mandatory insurance. So fuck you and whatever TV show pumps you information up your ass.

No, they couldn't. The legislation as it exists was passed was passed in two parts. One part was passed through the Senate in the brief period when the Senate had 60 members caucusing with the Democrats. Republicans did not have the votes to stop cloture. The second part was passed under reconciliation which does not require cloture but is limited in scope. That part was basically comprised of tweaks the House wanted to make to the

President Obama loves small businesses so much that he's driving them bankrupt with expensive mandatory health insurance regulations.

Umm... ACA doesn't kick in until you have at least 50 employees. To put that in perspective, assuming your store is open 16 hours per day, multiply the number of employees you want in the store at any given moment by 2.8 to compute the number of full-time-equivalent employees. So even a fairly large restaurant with ten or twelve people in it at any given moment still falls well below the 50-employee threshold where the ACA kicks in. A typical bookstore chain falls below the threshold until it has five or six locations....

No, fifty full-time-equivalent employees is just short of a Wal-Mart-sized store. If you're that big, you are not a small business. Period. You're a medium-sized business. You're bringing in at least three-quarters of a million dollars in profit annually just to cover the employee salaries alone, assuming you pay everyone minimum wage, not counting your contributions to FICA, location rent, business insurance, etc. A bookstore making a million bucks a year would have to sell five or six hundred books per day at typical markups to cover those sorts of costs. That's simply not a small business, and anyone who claims that the ACA is going to cause small businesses to go bankrupt is either ill-informed or deliberately distorting reality to promote an agenda.

You the proved the GP's point. The plant you refer to is not a small business.

BTW, everybody is covered in western Europe. Employers do not hire you part time to avoid their healthcare responsibilities as the responsibility is usually with government to provide care, or create a system of cheap insurance for care.

In Europe, we all have health coverage. We don't have to decide between keeping a finger (that we got cut off through our own inattention in the manufacturing plant) and sending our kids to college, or eating this month.

And we spend less than half per capita what Americans spend on healthcare, partially because we have the bargaining power of an entire government, partially because we're not engaged in an all-out war between insurance providers (who make more money when they deny you care), healthcare providers (who raise their prices because they know they are going to get stiffed by the insurance company half the time) and the patients (who just hope that their treatment is covered on their plan).

Mandatory health insurance is the watered-down weenie policy. Single-payer is the way to go. Why the hell would you enter into a contract with ANY entity that has a vested interest in you dying as quickly as possible?

Hope you enjoy the new europification of employment. Where everyone is part-time.

Uh, what ? Do you have even the vaguest idea of what employment traditions, standards and laws are like in Europe ?

Here's a hint: "secure jobs for life" isn't something you find right-wing free marketeers fighting for. That's because they're the guys who want employees who can be treated as a number and discarded at will whenever someone cheaper comes along.

The vendor a business owner I know buys from has 200 employees (and according to the government qualifies as a small business), and his costs are going up because of the ACA. Guess what happens to the prices of the goods he buys from that vendor?

They go up. But it goes up just as much for that business owner's competition, and since people on the average should have more money in their pockets because of more people with health insurance, it should be roughly a wash, at least in the medium to long term.

And even though he only employs 20 people, he does provide health insurance, and those costs are going sharply up as insurance companies seek income to pay for the increased costs forced on them by the ACA.

Funny, that. The insurance companies kept telling everyone that if you required everyone to have insurance, the costs should go down. Instead, they're using it as an excuse to profit. And this is why for-profit healthcare is a bad idea. None of this would be happening if the Republicans had allowed the Democrats' original proposal to pass (single-payer with a public option). But no. They insisted on an individual mandate with for-profit insurance companies. And then immediately started campaigning against it. But I digress.

...and prior to the ACA, here in good ol USA, the insurance companies were free to (a) refuse you outright, (b) drop you if they thought you were costing them too much, (c) refuse to cover pre-existing conditions.

If insurance companies had designed their business around the actuarial details for the whole population, they would have been able to offer a fair and reasonable product. Unfortunately, short of regulation that forced them to, they didn't do t

Also, he's the prez, meaning he probably didn't pay jack squat at the local bookstore he graced with the honor of visiting and bringing free publicity to in the first place.

That would be worrying, as it's corruption. Or at least may be taken as such. As a president he can not leave any doubt about such things, no matter how minor the amount. He's not a celebrity like a pop singer or actor or whatever, who do promotions for a living, he's the president and as such different rules apply.

No, politicians at Obama's level are being scrutinized constantly and intensively, and are squeaky clean certainly where the small stuff is concerned becaused simple cost-benefit analysis says it's the strategic thing to do. 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant' at work.

As posted above, this wasn't a state purchase: it came out of his pocket. And if he's loaded, it's because he worked his ass off. You don't go from street rat in a foreign country to president by happenstance. If the book store decided not to charge him - though I saw nothing to that effect - then it's the business owner's prerogative. It's not like Obama came in there, guns ablaze, and took the books.

Personally, I applaud him for paying more to keep a local resource available. Sure, maybe the actual

Obama probably doesn't care that ebooks are a dollar cheaper than dead-tree books, because unlike the vast majority of his constituents, he's loaded.

Correction: Obama probably doesn't care that electronic versions of the books are cheaper because he is buying them for gift purposes, and you can't realistically give electronic copies of a book as gifts thanks to DRM and our abusive copyright laws.